Participants should estimate that the driver of in a vignette had drunk more when they hit
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This practical is concerned with the estimation that the driver in our vignette had drunk more when he 'smashed into' rather than 'bumped into' the wall. This practical examines how participants' reaction to different words in the vignette will directly affect the outcome and their judgement of the driver in the vignette. This practical also examines the accuracy of eyewitnesses and shows how eyewitness testimony can be distorted.
Eyewitness testimony is a legal term for the use of an eyewitness to a crime to give a testimony in court about the identity of the person behind the crime or incident. Accurate witness testimony is essential to the criminal justice system. Cognitive research has been applied to answer the question of how accurate eyewitness testimony is. One of the reasons that eyewitness testimony may be inaccurate is because memory under any situation is subject to inaccuracy. Memory does not provide an accurate record of events but an interpretation of it.
The nature of the event affecting the eyewitness testimony can be due to two main features of memory. Cue-dependant memories have been applied to explain the effects of stress and face recognition...